The plants are in!

So, we've had a MAD MAD few weeks trying to get everything ready. It seems we got the allotment slightly late as it was time to plant a lot of stuff but we first needed to do all the clearing, by which time things would be late to go in!

Solution - work like dogs!!

What have we acheived so far?

Allotment cleared, all rubbish been skipped!
New Beds created
A section 10m x 5m rotovated
Greenhouse frame erected (waiting for glass and then base needed!)
Fencing re-located and new fence made
Pallets collected ready to make compost or manure bin
Bee hive to be delivered in the next few days!

Plants in the ground...

Potato (Red Duke of York and King Edwards)
Garlic
Red Onion and White onion (from sets)
Broad Beans
Strawberries
Peas
Dwarf french Beans
Beetroot
Purple sprouting Broccoli
Cabbage
Mint
Lettuce
Camomile
Dwarf Curry Plant
Thyme
Lettuce
Roses to cover fence (2 climbers and 2 ramblers)
Honeysuckle to cover fence (and the bees will love it!)
Raspberry bushes
Blackcurrant
Redcurrant
Tayberry
Blackberry
Apple tree
Cherry tree
Fig tree

Sown - Butternut squash, radish, Lettuce, Peppers, Basil, Hyssop, Runner beans, lemon balm, lemon grass, sweetcorn, toms, Melon and various chillies

Busy Busy!

After the monsoon, i thought the whole weekend would be a right off. Luckily there were a few breaks in the cloud. Even though we didn't leave the house until 11, we got loads done. Beds leveled, beetroot in, peas, beans, seeds sown. If i dare say so myself.....it looks.....lovely! Would have liked to get the roses in, never thought it would be so hard to get horse poo, and really annoying knowing that there is piles of it at my Mum's, perhaps we should just drive down and get some.
Poor Bo seems to have spent alot of time in the pushchair so i managed to get the baby swing up, so he can sit in that and watch us digging! He really enjoyed it, can't expect him to sit there all day, he is also desperate to crawl, have been trying to time it with his sleeps. Roll on summer when he can play on a rug.....if we get a real summer this year.
Claire xx

And the work starts...

So...the work has begun! We got back from a great trip to Peru and set straight to work.

Most of the work was preperation, we filled a skip with all the rubbish. Including the MASSIVE container of animal faeces...I kid you not! Awful stuff, not suitable for manure at all :o( Worst Job me and Claire have ever done.

We managed to borrow a rotovator and completely rotovatored a large section of the plot. Then we went a bit mad...we went to 'look' at roses and have ended up with Raspberry bushes, blackcurrant and redcurrant bushes, Tayberry and thornless blackberry bushes, fig tree, apple tree, cherry tree 2 climbing roses and 2 rambling roses...and a greenhouse!!

We have our eyes on bees ;o)

We've definitely broke the back of the work and can now start planting things in an organised fashion rather than just 'putting things in' in the way we did before heading off travelling.

Can't wait!

How much can we do in a week?

We have our plot but have to go away in a weeks time...how much can we get done? Can we plant anything??

The kids were visiting so we all rolled up our sleeves and dug in...literally!

And would you believe it but we managed to create 3 beds!! We planted onions, potatoes, garlic, broad beans and strawberries (strawberries were kindly donated by another allotment owner! cool)

There's still Sooooo much to do but at least we planted something before we went off on our travels. When we get back the HARD work begins!!

We got our lotty!!

OK, so after almost 2 years on a waiting list we got this...

Our very own piece of land, a mere 30 second walk to the end of our terrace!

To be completely honest our excitement was tinged with the slow realisation of the HUGE amount of work we needed to do to turn it from the dumping ground it had become to our vegetable growing haven!

Nevertheless we were delighted to have finally

got out lotty!! The down side was...we had a week to get something done to it as we were due to fly

off to go backpacking round Peru in a weeks time!!

This blog is our way of recording our progress to remind us of how much work we've done and just how far we've come!